Tangled

This week I took my kids for haircuts at a “kids haircuts” place. It’s ridiculous to pay $18 for a buzz cut!! But they love going, so once in a while I will take them. The reason why they love it so much is because they can play video games and listen to weird songs about haircuts sung by creepy animated scissors and hairspray cans.

When I went to the counter to pay I noticed a sign that said:

“IF WE HAVE TO COMB HAIR FOR MORE THAN 10 MINUTES TO GET TANGLES OUT, A FEE OF $16.95 WILL BE CHARGED.”

I said to the girl at the counter, “Just out of curiosity, why do you charge for this?”

She said that her staff was wasting a lot of time and running late a lot because of unexpected “snags” in their schedule, when parents would bring kids with rat’s nests on top of their heads.

“But how often does that really happen?” I scoffed.

She raised her eyebrows, “Enough for me to have to make a new policy and put that sign up.”

I wouldn’t let it go.

“But what do parents say? Are they annoyed or at least embarrassed if they have to pay the fee?”

“No – they don’t care, as long as they don’t have to deal with it, they say that they don’t brush their daughter’s hair for weeks, because they cry and they don’t like it.”

So let me get this straight, you let your kid walk around looking like Amy Winehouse so that she doesn’t have to experience the unpleasant feeling of a tangle. What the hell is happening to this world?? Since when do kids rule our world? Comb your daughter’s hair for god sakes!!! Or don’t have kids!!

And this is not a white-trash, “my mother is a prostitute and doesn’t wake up in time to comb my hair” situation. This salon is in a well-to-do town where ½ the moms are home with their kids and just can’t be bothered to groom their children. I have seen this phenomenon far too much since we started preschool, and thanks to Justin Beiber, even boys come in to school or to the bus stop looking like heroine addicts.

There is a 2nd grade boy at our bus stop who has hair that looks like this.......

That would be the day that my father would let my brother walk around with long hair with big matted tangle balls hanging out of it, while my mother watched Days of Our Lives and talked on the phone. If he ever came home after a long day of work and saw his son looking like one of the ratty ass kids I see all the time….he would commit my mother to a mental hospital.

Now – some of you are going to say “Oh – she has boys – she doesn’t know how hard it is to have girls.”

I AM a girl. I had nappy frizzy hair to my butt and my mother put “No more tangles” spray in every night – and sat there and combed that shit out. I hated it and I cried. Nobody cared.

And we are not doing these girls any favors by not letting them experience the discomfort of a snarl in their hair. IT IS LIFE!!! Unless you want your next hair cut to be a “Brittney Spears meltdown”….Deal with it.

And moms -if you can’t handle your child’s slight discomfort from a comb in their hair…exactly what can we look forward to seeing at the bus stop when they get their periods?

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AMEN. Nobody gave a rat’s ass when I cried from having snarls, tree branches, wild animals and whatever the heck else combed out of my mop head.
And the kid’s hair cut places? Totally blow. I’ve gone three times and each time was seen almost an HOUR after my appointment. Forget that!

I’m not sure why I feel compelled to defend my daughter’s hair but I do. I agree that the rat’s nest gnarls are unacceptable but I will say that my 5 yr old did go to school a few times this year where I was pretty sure the teacher was thinking about calling CPS. But in my defense as a mom, she was trying to do her hair on her own, she did brush it – it was just that the hairstyle that resulted looked terrible. But because I was trying to encourage her independence I let her go. but I would be MORTIFIED if I had to pay someone to detangle her rat’s nest!

I think allowing her independence to do it herself is WAY different than just deciding it’s too much trouble. I have a 6 year old w/gorgeous THICK hair halfway down her back. We brush that s&!+ EVERY DAY. She hates it! We have developed a system where it basically stays in braids night & day execpt for when I’m actually brushing it, which makes a huge difference and we get through 2 out of 3 days now without major tears. So thank goodness for braids!

I have one kid that looks like she could have been on toddlers and tiaras and another that looks like a transient. It’s sort of a Zahara/Shiloh paradox because I groom them both. I sure as shit wouldn’t pay $16.95 for someone to detangle my kid though. I think old school Joan Crawford and a pair of sewing shears is more my style. Shhhh, let’s keep that a secret.

Way to tell it like it is! People are lazy I tell ya. Speaking of shaved heads, I have a neighbor who gets his head shaved every time he gets bad grades. Yep, I look out the window and say “it must be report card season again.” Ugh. THAT is a little much. GREAT post!

I love this! I’ve often gaped open mouthed at prices for haircuts displayed in windows. We ran into something similar at a children’s dentist here in San Diego that specializes in the entertainment side of dentistry. They wanted to charge $40 alone to tell my daughters how to brush there teeth (the entire conversation took 2 minutes!).

I’m showing this post to my husband right now to explain why I cry all the time about the fact my 2.5 year old got my wretched half-curly, half-straight frizzy hair, which always looks like she just rolled in the street even if I’ve just spent 10 minutes brushing it. He doesn’t believe people are judging us for her hair. YES THEY ARE and here is the proof! I’m thisclose to flat ironing her hair every morning, but that’s a little too Toddlers and Tiaras for me.

Lol, that’s funny…..how about maybe just a little Moroccan oil??? Something that shows you don’t intentionally let your child look like a crack-whore??? I am sure you are a good mother that cares….nobody around here does…trust me!!!

My mother had a penchant for torturing me about my hair. She had pin-straight, thick hair like the staff at Happy Wok. Mine came out a wavy-curly combo (my dad had tiny, pen-spring curls). She teased me incessantly & made me cry by threatening to take me to the salon for an “afro perm”. She would bitch every night about the “birds’ nest” in my hair while she was combing it & would pin it to my head do-wrap style so it would be straight & knot-free in the morning. As an adult, I maintained good grooming habits. I would volunteer to help my cousin with her daughter’s curly mop (the record was 2 hours with a 3-y-o sitting on my lap in a wet bathing-suit & chlorine-soaked hair) and taught my own son to be neat & hygienic. As things go, he has rebelled against this & all other useful, healthy, clean things we’ve taught him in an effort to “not be like everybody else”. I continue to be horrified by the sweaty-sock smell emanating from his room in our house but am comforted a tiny bit by the fact that the countdown-to-25 has begun. He’ll be 23 in October…